


Starlight

by traptrixnepenthes



Category: Future Card Buddyfight
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 19:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16047473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traptrixnepenthes/pseuds/traptrixnepenthes
Summary: To be the protector of the child of destiny was Jack's god-given destiny, but knowing a prophecy by heart and acting on it are two very, very different things.this was written for marumaru96 on tumblr, with the request being to write tasuku and jack's first meeting. it spans the gap of time between the flashbacks in episodes 10 and 13, and relies heavily on a lot of lore that's only mentioned in card flavor text, so if you're wondering where i got some particular detail from, it was from there!





	Starlight

There was a prophecy that was given to the House of Jackknife by the Armordeity Dynamis, she who has seen the truth of the stars, and its existence was the reason the family of Armordragons could be so proud of themselves. To be favored by the gods was a point of pride among any family, and so the prophecy itself was a treasure that was as closely guarded as their ancestral weapons.

Ancient stone tablets would be worn down by time, and word of mouth was unreliable, so the original words of the prophecy itself had since been lost. But it, much like the jackknife the family was named after, was passed down from family head to family head, and the first child of each generation knew by heart what the prophecy represented: a child of destiny who had been blessed by the stars themselves would one day awaken on another planet. This child would have the power to change the fates of all the worlds, and the Jackknife family had been entrusted with the duty of protecting this child from anything that would harm them.

It had been one hundred generations since the prophecy’s creation, and in that time it had become something more akin to a legend than a certainty. There was no proof, not anymore, that the Armordeity had even come in contact with the family’s ancestors at all, but the pride of being the caretakers of the child of destiny was still something each future family head held dear. It was what they trained to be–more than just the wielder of their weapon, but for whom they wielded it  _for_. A reason for being.

It should have been an honor. But as Findar (the name traditionally given to the family head, as he who would find the child of destiny) discovered, the child of destiny was little more than a tiny blubbering crybaby. He’d received a vision in a dream from Dynamis herself, her whispers telling him to  _go to him_ , and so he did.

On a mountaintop somewhere on Earth, a small human child in tattered, muddy clothing walked aimlessly, trying to find his way. And it was there that Findar appeared to him, unsure of the situation, but knowing what his family was meant to do. And he spoke to the child, with his lines perfectly memorized–“I am known as Jackknife Dragon, Findar the 100th. Young man of destiny, what are your desires?”

The child stared at him, eyes the color of dragonflame reflecting the thin morning light, looking at Findar the same way he would’ve if Dynamis herself had come down from the sky and asked offered to grant him a wish. “I–” The child stuttered, voice weak, and then he started coughing, harsh sounds that quickly turned into sobbing. He fell to his knees, pressing his hands against his face, and wailed, “I want my mom and dad back!”

Findar had prepared his entire life for this moment, and yet everything about this situation was something he never could have prepared himself for. He landed on the mountain near the boy, awkwardly stretching his wings around him as if he were a hatchling, shielding him from the frightening world around him. “I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, his words restrained. “I can’t grant that.”

But the boy didn’t even seem to hear him at all, collapsed in a lump on the ground, and so they stayed there until the boy finally managed to sit up on the rocky ground and wipe his tears away. Findar politely didn’t mention the fact that he was still crying, because the boy seemed insistent on pretending like he wasn’t. “M-My name’s Tasuku. What’s your name again?”

Tasuku. The name of the child of destiny. It wasn’t quite as grand as Findar had expected. “I am known as Jackknife Dragon, Findar the 100th.”

“That’s…” Tasuku wiped at his cheek harshly, as if he was upset with himself for still crying. “That’s too long. I can’t remember that.”

“You may call me Fi–”

“Jack,” Tasuku said with some finality, “that’s what I’ll call you.” He said it with such certainty that the dragon now known as Jack just nodded. If that was what the child of destiny was going to call him, then that would just have to be his name now. This meeting wasn’t exactly going how he’d expected, but he knew what his role was meant to be. “You…you are going to stay, right? I don’t know why you’re here, but you’re going to stay with me, right?”

“I’m here because…” Jack had been about to explain his holy mission from the gods, but something in Tasuku’s gaze stopped him. Maybe it was the fragile, delicate expression on his face, as if he were going to shatter if Jack said the wrong thing to him. Maybe it was the plain and clear fact that something terrible had happened here, just before he’d arrived on this planet. There was no reason for a child so young to be on his own, looking as if he’d been living on this mountain all alone, his family gone. And there was no reason for Jack to burden him with the knowledge that the fate of the many worlds rested on his shoulders, either. “I’m just here to protect you.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the full truth. It  _wasn’t_  a lie, but the guilt of it still weighed heavily on him, and in that moment, he silently promised himself that one day, when things were more stable, he’d tell Tasuku what the stars had written about him.

Tasuku stared up at him, his eyes full of wonder, and Jack couldn’t help feeling even more guilty about it. “You’re a dragon, right? A real dragon?”

“Yes, I am. I come from another world, known simply as Dragon World.”

“…why are you here to protect me? Why…me? I’m just a kid. I–” Tasuku’s voice broke, and he started crying again. It was such a human thing to do, and Jack didn’t know what to do to help. “I couldn’t even do anything to–I couldn’t help them–I–”

“When you see someone in trouble, you want to help them, don’t you? That’s why I’m here.” The lie slid out of his mouth easier than he thought it would, but what else could he have done? Tasuku was too young to hear the real reason. “You don’t have to worry anymore.”

The words did almost nothing to comfort Tasuku, but that was still better than if they’d made the situation worse. Jack didn’t know anything about how to comfort others, much less a young child; all of his training had put an emphasis on his martial prowess and versatility, and as it turned out, that wasn’t what he should have focused on in the slightest. He couldn’t very well protect the child of destiny from something that had already happened, and all he knew to do here was simply sit alongside him, saying nothing while hoping his presence could bring some kind of comfort to this lost and lonely child.

Soon enough Tasuku recovered–or rather, recovered as much as he could–and Jack stretched his wings, the morning sunlight making Tasuku’s cyan hair shine like the oceans on Dragon World. The world around them was so bleak, so alien in comparison to the world he’d left behind to be here. If he could’ve spirited Tasuku back to his homeland instead of staying here, he would’ve done so in a heartbeat–but transport between worlds was too heavily regulated for that. All he could do for Tasuku now was protect him from anything else the world had in store for him until his destiny could find him.

The first day of wandering the mountains was more difficult than Jack could have anticipated. Tasuku wasn’t big enough yet to find a way to cling onto his neck so he could fly them somewhere safely, and he was still prone to bursting into tears whenever anything reminded him of whatever it was had happened. And so many things about the landscape did. After a bit of exploration, Jack had gathered that something on the scale of a natural disaster, probably an earthquake, had happened, and that was what had robbed Tasuku of his family. Every time the boy saw uneven ground or rocks or trees that had been shattered by whatever had happened, Jack could expect to hear him start sniffling again. Looking down one side of the mountain was even worse for him–it seemed the ruins of the city he used to live in were down that side, so Jack had quickly tried to shepherd him to the other side as soon as he could.

Jack would clear the path for him, and Tasuku would walk down it until he got too tired and sat down in any shade he could find. The sky was relentlessly overcast, reflecting Jack’s mood almost perfectly. He didn’t know what kinds of foods humans ate, and leaving Tasuku behind so that he could fly and look for water seemed like a bad idea. Leaving him alone in such a delicate state felt like breaking his oath, so he didn’t even bother trying.

As they descended the mountain together, Tasuku started seeming a bit more confident in the paths he chose, and at one point, led Jack directly to a nearly untouched bush that was heavy with fruit.

“My family–my family used to come hiking out here,” he said, picking a few berries and stuffing them into his mouth, “and my parents showed me places like this one.” The words were muffled behind both the berries and the tears that Jack knew would come as soon as he brought up his family again. “I don’t remember what–what they’re called, but do you want some too?”

Tasuku broke a branch off the bush and held it up to Jack, who took it gently in his claws. He couldn’t eat this. What was he, some kind of herbivore? “…Thank you.”

If anything, he could just hold onto it until Tasuku was hungry again. He had no time to hunt something for himself, and it would have simply felt wrong to kill something in front of the boy anyways. Not yet. Not now.

The sun wandered lazily behind the thin clouds until it became nighttime, and only once the world had fallen into darkness did the clouds finally clear. There weren’t as many stars on Earth as there were in Dragon World, and the night sky looked just as alien and unfamiliar as the rest of the world. Tasuku had decided a while ago that he was too exhausted to keep moving, and Jack had curled around him protectively. The boy had fallen asleep hours ago, and only Jack and small creatures living in the forest were still awake.

He gazed up at the stars between the clouds, shining so distantly in the sky. They didn’t even look like they were in the same positions as the ones in Dragon World. Jack had trained in other worlds, all to prepare him for his own great destiny alongside Tasuku’s, so he knew it wasn’t strange that each and every world’s night sky looked different, but to visit a world with another sky and to live in one were very, very different things.

“…’re you stargazing?”

Tasuku had woken up. “I am. The stars in your world are very different from my own.”

“I like stars.” Tasuku sat up, and Jack let him. This was the first time he’d talked about something he liked without the now-familiar sound of crying. “I like how they’re always there. The sun and the moon always move around, but the stars are always there even if you can see them or not.”

“…The stars like you too, Tasuku.” They were what chose him, after all. The child of the stars.

“They can’t like me. They’re not alive.”

“In my world,” Jack said, settling his head down on the ground comfortably, “we rely on the stars to tell us many things. They tell us of great fortune and of great calamity, and of simpler things, about ourselves. The stars are the words of our gods, and how they choose to communicate with us if they have nothing to say directly.”

“We have something like that, too. Fortune telling and astrology.” Tasuku gazed up at the stars with a fascination different than Jack had had when looking at the same sky. “I’m a Taurus. I think that means I’m supposed to be really stubborn.”

“If your stars can tell you something like that, then how can you know they aren’t alive?”

For once, Tasuku didn’t have an immediate response, instead choosing to think about it for a few moments. His gaze didn’t waver from the sky above the two of them. “If they are alive, I guess it’d be nice if they liked me, too.”

“You should go back to sleep, Tasuku. It’s going to be a long time until morning, and you’ll need all the rest you can get for tomorrow.”

“I know that. I’m just…I’m still hungry.”

As expected of a child. Jack produced the bunch of berries Tasuku had picked for him earlier, and while now they weren’t in their freshest condition, when he handed them to the boy he got the first smile he’d seen in their entire time together in return.

Soon enough Tasuku was asleep again, resting his head on Jack’s scales and turning him into what surely had to be Earth’s most uncomfortable pillow, and Jack in turn laid his head on the ground and fell asleep too. There’d been a thought in his head about staying awake to watch over Tasuku just in case, but he was just as exhausted as Tasuku was after their long day, and even if he’d wanted to stay up, he wouldn’t have been able to. The soft sounds of wind in the leaves reminded him of home when he closed his eyes, and that alone was enough to lull him to sleep.

He didn’t dream. The only thing that cut into the darkness of his rest was Tasuku frantically shaking him awake, and he lifted his head slowly, eyes still heavy with sleep. “Tasuku?”

“Jack!” It was part shriek and part sob, and Tasuku practically tackled him, hugging around Jack’s long neck as tightly as he could. It was fortunate that Tasuku still only had the strength of a child, because that would’ve been a threat from any other species. “You’re okay! You’re okay, you’re okay…”

He was crying again, as Jack had become accustomed to seeing, but it wasn’t the quiet crying that came with talking about things that reminded him of the life he’d lost. It was harsh sobbing directly into Jack’s ears, the boy’s whole body trembling as he held onto Jack as if his entire life depended on it. “What’s wrong, Tasuku? Did something happen?”

Tasuku hiccuped, squeezing Jack even tighter. “Y-you didn’t–” His voice caught and he started coughing again, and Jack extended a wing to shield him from the world again. As protective a gesture as he could offer this child. “You said you were here to–here to protect me and then you–you wouldn’t wake  _up_ , and–”

Ah. That certainly would have done it. “It’s alright, Tasuku. Nothing bad has happened to me.” The words did almost nothing to stop his crying, but at least he stopped wailing. “Dragons sleep much deeper than your kind does, it seems. You don’t need to worry.”

“I  _do_  need to worry! What if you–what if–”

“There are no what-ifs. I’m not going anywhere.” Tasuku had gotten so attached to him so quickly. Maybe it was just because he was still young, or maybe it was because Jack had suddenly appeared to fill the void that had been left behind by losing his parents. Whatever the case, Jack didn’t know how he was supposed to comfort Tasuku in this situation other than by simply telling him what he’d thought had happened was impossible. So they sat there, Tasuku clinging to him, Jack calmly telling him why nothing bad could have happened, until Tasuku stopped crying and sat down again, having exhausted himself from all that effort.

He wiped his face with his dirty shirt, smearing dirt where tears used to be, and Jack should’ve been relieved, but all he could think of now was trying to find clean water for Tasuku. He’d been crying almost nonstop since they first met, and he needed to drink something as soon as he could. He hadn’t even asked Tasuku how long he’d been out here for. What if he’d been sent too late, and the child he’d trained his entire life to protect just ended up dying here in these mountains of dehydration?

A new sense of urgency fueled him as he helped Tasuku navigate down the mountain, but it wasn’t as if he could move any faster than the boy’s slow, weary pace. He’d been sent all this way to protect this boy that the stars themselves relied on, this child who held the fates of all the worlds in his hands, only to let him down like this. It was like some sort of sick joke. Jack couldn’t have flown in search of other humans because leaving Tasuku alone would probably set off another bout of panicking. He couldn’t pick Tasuku up in his arms and carry him because he just wasn’t designed for that. He had all these gifts he’d been born with, and none of them could do anything to help. Tasuku was still so small, so weak and defenseless, and he just seemed to be weakening even more. He took rests more often, stumbling over his feet in his fatigue, and Jack felt so useless in how the only thing he could do was keep him from falling down. Children should be joyful and exuberant, not exhausted, crying messes.

If Jack had been the one to fall instead, it wouldn’t matter. His whole bloodline had been prepared for this role, and any one of them could surely fill his position. But there was no replacing the child of destiny, and so all Jack could hope for now was that humans weren’t completely useless and were searching for the survivors of whatever disaster had happened here.

As that thought crossed his mind, Jack heard a call from afar. He looked towards it and there was their salvation–another human. “Hey! Is that kid doing okay?”

This other human approached, and unlike Tasuku, he seemed healthy and perfectly fit. In any other situation Jack would’ve been wary of the sudden appearance of a stranger, but instead he just stepped back and watched as this stranger checked Tasuku’s pulse and breathing. Tasuku was so fatigued he didn’t even bother objecting to any of it. “He’s exhausted,” Jack said, still ready to beat whoever this was back as needed, “and he’s barely eaten in the last two days. How long has–how long has it been since what happened here?”

“Three days. It’s lucky that we found him so quickly.” He carefully gathered Tasuku up in his arms. “I’m Takihara Tsurugi from the Buddy Card Office. We’ve been looking for survivors. Is he on his own?”

“He was when I found him.”

Takihara barely reacted, instead continuing to ask questions with the brutal efficiency of someone who had already seen and heard it all, and Jack answered him to the best of his ability. No, he didn’t know where Tasuku’s family might be. No, he’d only encountered Tasuku just the day before. No, he didn’t have any of Tasuku’s medical records, and if they existed they were probably lost along with everything else in whatever had happened here. All he knew was that Tasuku had been on his own since they first met, and a small handful of irrelevant details about his life.

“Not much to go on…” Takihara mumbled these words, sounding deep in thought. “But it’s alright. He’s still in pretty stable condition, and we should be able to get him safely to shelter. Thank you for taking care of him and keeping him as safe as you could.”

“I’ll accompany you to the shelter.”

“Sure, there’s still space for a dragon or two. It’s just a temporary location for right now because of how extensive the damage was, but if you’re new to Earth you probably won’t mind too much.” Jack’d had misgivings about Takihara because of how calm he’d been, but he realized it wasn’t calm that kept his gaze focused and his words even, but weariness. Three days of what sounded like relatively unsuccessful searches through the wreckage and surrounding mountains would’ve been a burden on anyone, and who knew how long he’d have to continue. Until they’d found everyone they could, he supposed. “Besides, this kid’s lost his family. I would’ve asked you to come with us, anyways.”

Takihara and Jack didn’t talk on the return to the shelter, and Tasuku was fast asleep. The officer only stayed just long enough to get Tasuku into a makeshift bed and give nurses and others instructions on what he needed in the immediate future, and then he was off again to find other lost ones in the mountains. Jack himself was kept relatively separate from the help Tasuku could receive from humans, and it was almost fascinating how their medical terminology sounded more like completely alien words than something that was actually helping Tasuku get back on his feet. But with rest, food, and water, he was soon back to being his usual crybaby self, hiding by Jack in favor of interacting with anyone else.

It took a full week for him to stop crying at a moment’s notice, and in that time, Jack noticed that he was focusing much of his attention on the officers, watching their work. Jack had pointed out Takihara to Tasuku when the officer had come back some day after Tasuku had settled, saying he was the person who had rescued him, and so it was Takihara who took up a lot of Tasuku’s attention in particular. It was after a few days of this observation that Tasuku said to Jack, very out of the blue, “I’m sorry for making you protect me.”

Jack blinked. It was worrying, hearing those words come out of a child’s mouth. “That isn’t something you need to apologize for,” he said as kindly as he could. “You’re still young. It’s only natural that you are protected.”

Tasuku didn’t answer, and Jack could only wonder what kinds of things were running through his head.

The next day, Tasuku went up to one of the nurses and asked if there was anything he could do to help, and Jack simply observed the exchange. The nurse had been interrupted in her busy duties, but she still took the time to gently explain to Tasuku that there wasn’t anything he could help with, because he was still too young, and to not worry about it. She and the other people working at this shelter had everything under control.

Tasuku didn’t look satisfied with that response either, and it was then that Jack realized there was more to what Tasuku was saying. When they’d first met, the child of destiny had been nothing more than just a child who didn’t need any of the pressures of his fate to weight on him, lest he shatter under them. But Tasuku now, almost two weeks later, had recovered surprisingly fast, and now he had a purpose he wanted to fulfill.

_This_  was the child of destiny.

So on a quiet day, as Tasuku walked restlessly through the outskirts of the shelter and through the surrounding forest, Jack stood before him again. His lines were still perfectly memorized, but now he felt he knew more about what exactly it was he was asking of Tasuku. “I am known as Jackknife Dragon, Findar the 100th. Young man of destiny, what are your desires?”

And Tasuku looked up at him, looking on the verge of tears again. “I…I want to help people. But I’m a kid! I need to be an adult! Can you–can you help?”

A completely different response. Tasuku was still young, still fragile after the disaster that had befallen him, and while his words were shaky the conviction in his eyes was not. “If that is what you desire, young one,” Jack said, his words heavy with the weight of knowing that what he said here would influence the fates of the many worlds, “then I will do all I can to help you.”


End file.
